The Red Gown: Reflections on the Visual History of Menstruation in Scotland

Over the last decades, menstruation has become more present in public discourse in Scotland.While scholars are increasingly documenting this change, little attention has been paid to therole of menstrual art made in Scotland. In this article, we explore the historic contexts ofmenstrual art in the town of St Andrews and in Scotland during the late twentieth and earlytwenty-first century, and ask what this reveals about menstrual absence and presence in publicdebates. We do this in collaboration with artist Bee Hughes, whose practice focuses on thevisible and invisible aspects of menstruation, and who was artist in residence at St Andrews in2020. Due to a university strike and a pandemic, our collaboration changed and subsequentlyfocused more on the histories of menstrual art. We thus assess symbols and collections ofmenstrual visual culture in Scotland, including the use of the ceremonial red gown at theUniversity of St Andrews, and menstrual art collections at Glasgow Women’s Library and StAndrews Special Collections. Together, we reflect on how their histories might be both present(institutionalised) and absent (when not on display). 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Returning Individual Tap Water Testing Results to Research Study Participants after a Wildfire Disaster

After the devastating wildfire that destroyed most of the town of Paradise, California in 2018, volatile organic compounds were found in water distribution pipes. Approximately 11 months after the fire, we collected tap water samples from 136 homes that were still standing and tested for over 100 chemicals. Each participant received a customized report showing the laboratory findings from their sample. Our goal was to communicate individual water results and chemical information rapidly in a way that was understandable, scientifically accurate, and useful to participants. On the basis of this process, we developed a framework to illustrate considerations and priorities that draw from best practices of previous environmental results return research and crisis communication, while also addressing challenges specific to the disaster context. We also conducted a follow-up survey on participants’ perceptions of the results return process. In general, participants found the results return communications to be understandable, and they felt less worried about their drinking water quality after receiving the information. Over one-third of the participants reported taking some kind of action around their water usage habits after receiving their results. Communication with participants is a critical element of environmental disaster research, and it is important to have a strategy to communicate results that achieves the goals of timeliness, clarity, and scientific accuracy, ultimately empowering people toward actions that can reduce exposure.

Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks is an American television series that first aired on the ABC network in the United States on 8 April 1990. Despite its critical acclaim the show was cancelled at the end of its second season in 1991 and remained off-air until its third series, titled Twin Peaks: The Return, was aired on the premium television network Showtime in 2017. The show was created by renowned filmmakers David Lynch and Mark Frost, whose television successes included police drama Hill Street Blues, and it was widely promoted as the series that would “change television.” The program, set in the fictional northwestern US town of Twin Peaks, was focused on the central mystery surrounding the murder of local schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the efforts of FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in solving the case. The show featured a cast of inhabitants of the town and was renowned for quirky characters, dream sequences, and surrealism, which were seen as hallmarks of David Lynch’s cinematic work. The question of “who killed Laura Palmer?” constituted the key narrative enigma for the first season of the show. When this mystery was resolved at the midpoint of the second series, audience interest waned, and the show’s declining viewing figures led to its cancellation. The program’s original run ended on a cliffhanger where lead character Dale Cooper became possessed by the evil spirit BOB (who was responsible for Palmer’s death while possessing her father Leyland Palmer [Ray Wise]). In 1992, David Lynch directed the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which involved a return to Twin Peaks to depict the events leading up to Laura Palmer’s murder. The film was initially viewed as a disappointment, especially for those who wanted resolution to the show’s cliffhanger ending. Fire Walk with Me has since been reappraised and is now widely viewed as a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking. In 2016, David Lynch and Mark Frost began teasing a Twin Peaks–related announcement on their social media, with The Return of the series on Showtime announced soon after. While some setbacks were encountered when Lynch temporarily departed due to conflicts over budget and artistic vision, Twin Peaks: The Return aired in 2017 and was widely hailed as a return to form for the series. Throughout its history, Twin Peaks has attracted a loyal fanbase and critical attention on issues, including authorship, aesthetics, narrative, and genre.

Mesolithic Sites in the Upper Tobol

The article introduces prehistoric artifacts from the sites of Karasor-5, Karasor-6, and Karasor-7 obtained in 1998. The archaeological site of Karasor is located in the Upper Tobol region, near the town of Lisakovsk. Stone tools, pottery fragments, a ceramic item, and a bronze arrow head were collected from a sand blowout, which had destroyed the cultural layer. The paper gives a detailed description of the pottery. The stone tools were examined using the technical and typological analysis, which featured the primary splitting, the morphological parameters and size of plates, the ratio of blanks, plates, flakes, and finished tools, the secondary processing methods, and the typological composition of the tools. The nature of the raw materials was counted as an independent indicator. The pottery fragments, the bronze arrow head, and the ceramic item belonged to the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The stone industry of the Karasor archeological cluster proved to be a Mesolithic monument of the Turgai Trough. The technical and typological analysis revealed a close similarity with the Mesolithic sites of the Southern and Middle Trans-Urals, as well as the forest-steppe part of the Tobol-Irtysh interfluve. The stone artifacts were dated from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age.

Spatial Pattern of the Vitality of Chinese Characteristic Towns: A Perspective from Nighttime Lights

Nighttime light images are valuable indicators of regional economic development, and nighttime light data are now widely used in town monitoring and evaluation studies. Using the nighttime light data acquired through Luojia1-01 and the geographic information system spatial analysis method, this study analyzed the spatial vitality pattern of 402 characteristic towns in six geographic divisions of China. The average DN (Digital Number) value of Guzhen, having the highest vitality level, was 0.05665221, whereas that of Xin’an, having the lowest vitality level, was 0.00000186. A total of 89.5% of towns have a low level of vitality. The regional differences were significant; high vitality towns are concentrated in economically developed coastal areas, mainly in two large regions of east China and south central. The average lighting densities of the towns in east China and south central were 0.004838 and 0.003190, respectively. The lighting density of the towns in west central was low, and the vitality intensity was generally low. A spatially significant positive correlation of small-town vitality was observed, and “high–high” agglomeration was primarily distributed in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Fujian coastal areas in east and south China. The towns with high vitality intensity had similarities in their geographical location, convenient transportation conditions, and profound historical heritage or cultural accumulation along with many industrial enterprises. This research empirically demonstrates the feasibility of using the 130-m-high resolution of the nighttime lighting data of Luojia1-01 to evaluate the vitality at the town scale, and the vitality evaluation focuses on the spatial attributes of the town, which is meaningful to guide the development of the town in each region given the vast area of China and the large differences in the development of different regions.

Description of Aurelia pseudosolida sp. nov. (Scyphozoa, Ulmaridae) from the Adriatic Sea

Until 2021, the genus Aurelia contained eleven described species (WoRMS, 2020), with many genetic species still awaiting a formal description. In 2021, ten new species of Aurelia were described almost solely from genetic data in a novel attempt to use genetic characters as diagnostic characters for species descriptions, leaving seven genetic species still undescribed. Here we present the description of a new Aurelia species from the Adriatic Sea using an integrative taxonomy approach, i.e., employing molecular as well as morphological characteristics in order to describe this new Aurelia species. The species is described based on a single medusa sampled from the town of Rovinj (Croatia), North Adriatic, amidst combined blooms of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidy and cnidarian Aurelia solida in the summer of 2020. Based on genetic data, the newly described Aurelia pseudosolida sp. nov. has never been sequenced in any of the previous investigations of the molecular diversity of Aurelia. This is the second species belonging to Discomedusae described from the North Adriatic in little more than half a decade, which could be yet another indication of the susceptibility of the North Adriatic to proliferation of non-indigenous gelatinous species, especially if we take into account historical as well as recent blooms of suspected non-indigenous gelatinous species such as Muggiaea atlantica, Aurelia solida, Mawia benovici and Mnemiopsis leidy.

Synthesis of the Current Knowledge Concerning the Construction of French Traditional Cob Building for Giving Recommendations

The museum of the “Bourrine du bois Juquaud” is a tourist site located in the town of Saint Hilaire de Riez in France. It presents the daily life of the inhabitants of the marsh in the early twentieth century and their traditional earthen houses called Bourrine. The Bourrine is a cob construction with reed roof. The earth used for walls is soil from marshlands added with dune sand and straw fibres but some part are without fibres like coating applied on walls. By now, the knowledge acquired on the implementation of these mixtures for the lifting of the walls are oral knowledge and it is necessary to ensure the preservation of this traditional heritage. Currently the done reparations present cracks due to shrinkage. This study aims at well defining the mixtures by a scientific approach. The earth and dune sand were analyzed by taking cores from different existing bourrines and also by extracting soil on site. Different mixtures were produced by varying the proportion of earth sand and water. The linear shrinkage were measured. Corrections were done to get the best mixture for manufacturing and repairing the Bourrines.

Mine Water as Geothermal Resource in Nowa Ruda Region (SW Poland)

The Lower Silesian Coal Basin in south-western Poland was a region of intensive coal mining until the late 1990s. After mining was stopped and the mines were closed, the underground workings were flooded. This created an underground reservoir of waters that can be economically managed to supply energy, using heat pumps, to the town of Nowa Ruda. The article analyses the energy potential of these waters. It was shown that open loop with reinjection system based on mine shafts can provide 10 GWh of geothermal energy while reducing emissions from 4.27 tCO2 to 0.22 tCO2. In addition, 2.09 GWh can be extracted from water flowing out of mine shafts via adits. As a final result, this will lead to improve air quality as well as increase the environmental value of the region. These results can act as a reference tool for local government, specialists in energy policy at the local scale. They are also the basis for future work aimed at acquiring external funds to carry out detailed studies of the condition of mine shafts, geothermal profiling of water in sunken shafts and test pumping, which will make it possible to determine the real quantities of water to be used.

Students of Railway College of the Town of Taiga in 1943–1991

The present article introduces a historical analysis of students of the Technical College of Taiga in 1943–1991. The socal analysis involved factorial, structural-systemic, and historical approaches. The Technical Railway College has almost 80 years of history, which makes it one of the leading educational institutions of its branch in the country. Since 1991, it has been the Taiga Institute of Railway Transport, a branch of the Omsk State Railway University. The author identified the changes in the contigent of applicants in 1943–1991. They appeared to be connected with the development of the country and education policy. The revealed characteristics made it possible to clarify the logic of the development of a particular institution based on the changes in the forms and methods of recruitment, payment, age, etc. In this regard, recruitment acted as a set of special methods, e.g.clubs of young naturalists, contests and conferences, material base, promotion of railway professions through alumni, etc. In addition, good working conditions and high salary were important factors that attracted people to the Technical College of Taiga.

The Brigade of the Great Hungarian Plain The crimes of the most notorious military detachment during the wave of paramilitary violence called the Hungarian White Terror in 1919–1921, and the further life of a radical right-wing paramilitary commander

In 1919–1920s, paramilitary violence was an almost natural phenomenon in Hungary, like in many other countries of Central Europe. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the new right-wing government, establishing its power with the help of the Entente powers, could difficulty rule the quasi anarchistic conditions. In 1919–1921, Hungary was terrorized by irregular military formations that were formally part of the National Army, and radical right-wing soldiers committed serious crimes frequently by anti-Semitic motivations. One of the most notorious military detachment was organised by young first lieutenant of the Air Force Iván Héjjas, who, with the help of his armed militiamen, abusing the anarchistic conditions due to civil war, build up his own quasi private state in the town of Kecskemét and in its neighbourhood, the Great Hungarian Plain. His rule lasted for two years, his subordinates murdered and/or robbed hundreds of people, mainly of Jewish origin, but later they were given amnesty. Héjjas later became an influential radical right-wing politician of the Hungarian political scene in the period between the two world wars. The present research article makes an attempt to reconstruct the wave of paramilitary violence of Iván Héjjas’s detachment, and also examines of the further life of a used-to-be radical right-wing paramilitary commander and politician who gradually became member of the Hungarian political elite, despite his notorious past.